you can engage with journalists while holding to rationalist principles to only say true things.
Suppose there was a relatively simple computer program, say a kind of social media bot, that when you input a statement, posts the opposite of that statement. Would you argue that as long you only type true statements yourself, using this program doesn’t constitute lying?
To make the analogy stronger, what if it only inverts it 1⁄10 times? Then I think the answer is non-obvious and depends on your principles.
If you’re deontological about it, I think you could make a case that your hands are not dirty for making the best of a bad system.
If you’re consequentialist about it, I’m saying the 9⁄10 accuracies could outweigh the 1⁄10 inaccuracies. And as Zack said, the 1⁄10 errors are rarely true inversions. That’s why
even if you do get misquoted, it doesn’t mean talking to the journalist was net-negative, even for that particular piece and even ex-post. As annoying as it is, it might be outweighed by the value of steering the article in positive ways.
Even if it were 1⁄10, it might be the most important 1⁄10. Something like that is in fact plausible: if someone were optimally trying to mostly look factual while pushing a political agenda, they would probably sort statements by ratio of [political benefit of lying] / [expected cost of being caught lying], pick a threshold, and lie whenever that ratio exceeds the threshold; and political benefit, as evaluated by this hypothetical journalist-hack, likely correlates with importance to the reader.
I agree it’s possible and it’s worth thinking through considerations like this. But I still don’t think this is a good model of journalists’ incentives.
In practice, “probability of being seen as inaccurate” is the term that dominates, which means inaccuracies tend to show up at points in the news article that face the least scrutiny, eg the part of an AI article where the journalist rushes through what a transformer is. These are the parts that are often least important to readers, and least important to you as a source.
And then I would describe the motivation more as “career success” than “political benefit”. As in getting a big scoop or writing a successful story, more than pushing a particular agenda. I think what journalists’ consider a successful story is kind of correlated with importance to the reader, barely correlated with what’s impactful, and barely correlated with how frustrating it would be for you to be misquoted. Consider the ChatGPT suicide example: the journalist is focused on their big scoop, but probably cares much less about the paragraph I pulled out. Ditto for readers. But I think it’s very valuable it was included.
And then I would describe the motivation more as “career success” than “political benefit”. As in getting a big scoop or writing a successful story, more than pushing a particular agenda.
This gets subtle. I can think of several cases where journalists sat on what would have been delicious scandals that should be good for a career, for what look like political reasons. That said, if one looks closer, it’s plausible that, in each case, they reasoned (plausibly correctly) that it would not have actually been good for their career to publish it, because they would have faced backlash (for political/tribal reasons), and possibly their editors (if applicable) would have refused to allow it. I imagine there is partial but incomplete equivalence between this kind of “externally imposed political motivation” versus “internalized political motivation”, and it may be worth tracking the difference.
That’s for omitting stories. For lying… On priors, that difference of external vs internal political motivation would be important: the latter would encourage a journalist to come up with new lies and use them, while the former would mostly just make them go along with lies that the rest of their tribe is already telling. I do see plenty of “going along with lies” and not much innovative mendacity; I’ll note that the “lies” I refer to are usually “not technically false, but cherry-picked and/or misleadingly phrased, which a normal person will hear and predictably come away believing a statement that is false; and which a journalist who felt a strong duty to tell the truth as best they could would not say absent stronger external pressure”. (See Zvi on bounded distrust.)
Suppose there was a relatively simple computer program, say a kind of social media bot, that when you input a statement, posts the opposite of that statement. Would you argue that as long you only type true statements yourself, using this program doesn’t constitute lying?
But journalists don’t invert source statements. That’s against the rules and would be punished. (They do cherry-pick, which presents similar problems.)
To make the analogy stronger, what if it only inverts it 1⁄10 times? Then I think the answer is non-obvious and depends on your principles.
If you’re deontological about it, I think you could make a case that your hands are not dirty for making the best of a bad system.
If you’re consequentialist about it, I’m saying the 9⁄10 accuracies could outweigh the 1⁄10 inaccuracies. And as Zack said, the 1⁄10 errors are rarely true inversions. That’s why
Even if it were 1⁄10, it might be the most important 1⁄10. Something like that is in fact plausible: if someone were optimally trying to mostly look factual while pushing a political agenda, they would probably sort statements by ratio of [political benefit of lying] / [expected cost of being caught lying], pick a threshold, and lie whenever that ratio exceeds the threshold; and political benefit, as evaluated by this hypothetical journalist-hack, likely correlates with importance to the reader.
I agree it’s possible and it’s worth thinking through considerations like this. But I still don’t think this is a good model of journalists’ incentives.
In practice, “probability of being seen as inaccurate” is the term that dominates, which means inaccuracies tend to show up at points in the news article that face the least scrutiny, eg the part of an AI article where the journalist rushes through what a transformer is. These are the parts that are often least important to readers, and least important to you as a source.
And then I would describe the motivation more as “career success” than “political benefit”. As in getting a big scoop or writing a successful story, more than pushing a particular agenda. I think what journalists’ consider a successful story is kind of correlated with importance to the reader, barely correlated with what’s impactful, and barely correlated with how frustrating it would be for you to be misquoted. Consider the ChatGPT suicide example: the journalist is focused on their big scoop, but probably cares much less about the paragraph I pulled out. Ditto for readers. But I think it’s very valuable it was included.
I’ll have more on this in the epistemics post.
This gets subtle. I can think of several cases where journalists sat on what would have been delicious scandals that should be good for a career, for what look like political reasons. That said, if one looks closer, it’s plausible that, in each case, they reasoned (plausibly correctly) that it would not have actually been good for their career to publish it, because they would have faced backlash (for political/tribal reasons), and possibly their editors (if applicable) would have refused to allow it. I imagine there is partial but incomplete equivalence between this kind of “externally imposed political motivation” versus “internalized political motivation”, and it may be worth tracking the difference.
That’s for omitting stories. For lying… On priors, that difference of external vs internal political motivation would be important: the latter would encourage a journalist to come up with new lies and use them, while the former would mostly just make them go along with lies that the rest of their tribe is already telling. I do see plenty of “going along with lies” and not much innovative mendacity; I’ll note that the “lies” I refer to are usually “not technically false, but cherry-picked and/or misleadingly phrased, which a normal person will hear and predictably come away believing a statement that is false; and which a journalist who felt a strong duty to tell the truth as best they could would not say absent stronger external pressure”. (See Zvi on bounded distrust.)
Re going along with lies—Yeah, I think the coverage of data center water usage has been an example of that at its worst :/
Re journalists sitting on scoops—I’m curious if you’re able to share any examples? I don’t doubt that it happens.